Here’s a little overlooked fact — the Lakers have the ninth-best defense in the NBA right now. Seriously. They are giving up 99.5 points per 100 possessions (according to Hoopdata), tying them with the Spurs in the top 10. That despite some ugly performances on that end of the floor against the Grizzlies and Kings. The Lakers inconsistent play has led to some wild swings in their numbers.

The offense in recent games has not looked as smooth, like the 77 points against Indiana Tuesday. The season overall numbers look much better than the product on the court. And why should that product look polished — they added Steve Nash and Dwight Howard last summer, tried to learn the Princeton offense, had Howard out for most of training camp then Nash got injured early in the season, then they fired Mike Brown and brought in Mike D’Antoni with a totally new offensive system. Nothing about that says smooth.

“Within the numbers, there is some good stuff, defensively mostly,” D’Antoni said. “Stuff that in the long run will make us a contender. In the short run, our offense is anemic right now. We don’t move the ball, we don’t do a lot of things we should be doing and we have to figure that out.

“We have to get better than 77 points.”

You think?

Steve Nash will help somewhat but right now you have players like Pau Gasol who played the last few years in the triangle, then Mike Brown’s more traditional sets, and now he is being asked to play on instinct. Well, after all those years his instincts aren’t to do what is best for the free-flowing D’Antoni offense. He has to relearn that.

And a lot of Lakers are in the same boat.

What should encourage Lakers fans in this is D’Antoni talking results in the long term — he gets it. This is not about what is happening in November, it’s about steps in a process that gets them to June. Right now those are stumbling baby steps. But when Nash returns those steps will start to get steadier, as will the ones they start to gain through experience.

And then we’ll see. Talk to me about where the Lakers are after the first of the year and we’ll start to have a better sense than we do right now.

By then the Lakers might have started to figure out the D’Antoni offense.